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Canadian army has no idea how it lost three artillery shells worth $500,000 on way out of Afghanistanhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/08/canadian-army-has-no-idea-how-it-lost-three-artillery-shells-worth-500000-on-way-out-of-afghanistan/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/08/canadian-army-has-no-idea-how-it-lost-three-artillery-shells-worth-500000-on-way-out-of-afghanistan/#commentsSun, 08 Feb 2015 21:22:14 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=694800

OTTAWA — The Canadian army somehow lost three highly-sophisticated, precision-guided artillery shells on its way out of Afghanistan in an embarrassing case that resulted in an almost two-year investigation.

Known as Excalibur rounds, the 155-millimetre high-explosive ammunition could not be accounted for among the mission close-out paperwork as the military withdrew from Kandahar in late 2011.

Newly released records, obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information legislation, show defence officials, at first, thought as many as five of the global positioning system-guided shells had gone missing when soldiers tore down their forward operating bases. But that number was reduced to three when it was realized someone had filed paperwork twice.

The shells are not cheap. They come with a price tag of US $177,224 per round, but are accurate to within 20 metres even when fired from up to 40 kilometres away.

Both the country’s overseas command and military police conducted extensive investigations, but never located the ammunition and defence officials requested last summer that the over $513,000 loss be written off the government’s books.

The request was approved, the documents show.

What happened to the ammunition remains as much a mystery as when they were first discovered missing.

“Although theft is a possibility, given physical size and weight of the ammunition and the tight ammunition security measures that were in place in theatre, theft is highly unlikely,” said a July 18, 2014 briefing to the country’s joint operations commander.

The round weighs 48 kilograms and has metal fins that guide it to the target, making it awkward to handle.

Even still, the loss has international repercussions because the U.S. technology is governed by International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) and the awkward situation had to be reported to National Defence’s Controlled Technology Access and Transfer (CTAT) office.

Although theft is a possibility, given physical size and weight of the ammunition and the tight ammunition security measures that were in place in theatre, theft is highly unlikely

The strict control office regulations required that it be notified within 48 hours of a piece of technology going missing, but the army delayed reporting it for over 15 months, saying that given “the exiting protocols in place to fire an Excalibur round, it was a belief that this was a paperwork error only.”

A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Rob Nicholson said thorough investigations are conducted whenever there is a loss of public property in order to ensure there are no future incidents.

“The security and protection of all its assets is a top priority for National Defence,” she said in an email Sunday.

NDP defence critic Jack Harris described the loss of the ammunition as a “gross embarrassment,” but was also disturbed by the delaying in reporting.

“It’s embarrassing to have this happen with such expensive and controversial shells that need to be protected, but I think it’s also potentially damaging to our relationship with the Americans,” he said.

Someone at National Defence needs to account for the lapse, he said.

Investigators pored over five years of artillery supply and gun logs, but were never able to reconcile the three missing shells.

The possibility the ammunition could have been “lent but not properly accounted” to U.S. forces operating in the same area during 2009 was considered.

The documents show the master warrant officer in charge of the supply depot at Kandahar Airfield when he was approached by Americans who indicated they were getting set up in a new position, had spoken with Canadian commanders “and it was all right to give them three of those projectiles.”

He refused the request, but wrote later, in an affidavit, that he learned from U.S. troops that they had received shells through their own supply chain.

It was before September 11, 2001, before the World Trade Center towers came down, before Al-Qaeda and Osama and the Taliban and IEDs and Kandahar and ramp ceremonies and the Highway of Heroes became part of a common language among Canadians that Adam West, an 18-year-old fresh out of high school, did what he had always wanted to do and joined the Canadian Army.

Both grandfathers fought in the Second World War. His mother’s Dad, James Marshall, a man he never met, was one “brave son-of-a-bitch” who came home with a chest full of medals. Forbes West, the grandfather he did know, came home and climbed the ranks to become a general.

Being a soldier was in the blood.

“I joined up and was naïve enough to think that I’d never have to go off to war, that maybe I’d do some peacekeeping,” says Captain Adam West, now 32, reflecting on his younger self from 14 years ago, while sitting at his desk at the Moss Park Armoury in Toronto.

“I remember taking the streetcar in those days and I had people call me a Fascist. Other people would say, ‘What’s with the uniform?’ I would tell them I was soldier in the Canadian Army. They’d say, ‘Canada has an army?’

“Afghanistan changed that. People come up to me now and say thank you.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in March that May 9, 2014 would be a “National Day of Honour” commemorating Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan. There is a parade planned in Ottawa with a ceremony to follow on Parliament Hill. Speeches are to be made, a moment of silence observed.

“My thoughts are going to be similar to on a Remembrance Day,” Capt. West says. “Divided between the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice; the soldiers I served with, especially the brave soldiers of my platoon; the people of Afghanistan and finally my family for the sacrifices they went through.

“Having said that, I don’t believe this day will make those thoughts overly special for me because there has not been a day since my deployment to Afghanistan where these thoughts have not been with me.”

And that is the big difference between Capt. Adam West and you and me, and most Canadians. We did not grow up wanting to be soldiers and we had never heard of Kandahar City, either, and we are presumably already half-forgetting about it now as Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan shifts from a current event to a chapter for the history books.

But the past for the 32-year-old career soldier remains palpable. He never forgets. The heat of Kandahar, that first blast of sun-baked air searing into his lungs as he stepped off a plane in August 2006 to begin a seven-month stint during some of the most dangerous days of the war, is just as real, just as present now as it was then.

He was 25. Trained, ready and within a matter of weeks he was standing in a valley when he heard a whistling noise, just like in an old war movie — a mortar dropping from the sky. It landed 30 feet from where he stood. Some rocks absorbed the blast. No rocks, no Capt. West still around today to talk about it.

Two days later he was in an RG 31 — picture an oversized truck with a gun turret on top — with four other men. It was morning. Hot. They were driving through downtown Kandahar, the sixth vehicle in a convoy. They passed a cross street. A station wagon was sitting there with its right turn signal on. It started to turn right then veered left. Somebody, the gunner, Corporal John Makela from Ottawa, saw what was happening before it happened and yelled — “IED! IED!” Then: boom. The RG 31’s tires burst, the windows shattered and the engine caught fire, as a cloud of dust engulfed everything. In the middle of it, the Canadians were checking their arms, yup, they were still attached, and their legs, yup, still attached, and saying, “Are you OK, are you OK?”

Miraculously, they all were.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Murray BrewsterMaster Cpl. Daniel Choong, left, Cpl. Harry Smiley, centre, and Cpl . Gavin Early take down the Canadian flag for the last time in Afghanistan on March 12, 2014, bringing an end to 12 years of military involvement in a campaign that cost the lives of 158 soldiers.

Afterwards, when military intelligence interviewed the men for, well, paperwork, some would remember the station wagon as being grey, others said yellow and others said it was an SUV, and not a station wagon. Capt. West remembers it as being “charred black.”

“All that was left was a burned out chassis,” he says.

(Corporal Makela, the gunner, would later be wounded and awarded the Military Medal of Valour for subduing a second suicide car bomber — two weeks after the RG 31 was hit by the first.)

Nothing has ever made me prouder

Two days, two near misses, convinced Capt. West to change his MSN address to: gettingblownupsucks. “My girlfriend at the time didn’t think it was funny,” he says, explaining that to deal with the daily stress, the fear, you made light of the close scrapes. Or else you risked thinking too much about them. His 33-man platoon with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was ambushed 18 times in seven months of escorting supply convoys around Kandahar Province. They all came home in one piece, more or less.

But then, 158 Canadian soldiers didn’t.

So was it worth it, expending all that Canadian blood and treasure? To answer, the captain tells me a story about what he remembers most about his Afghanistan experience. And it is not the getting blown up parts, but driving those roads and seeing all the kids, scrawny little Afghan urchins, poorer than dirt, sprinting across fields to watch the Canadians roll by.

Waving. Smiling. Happy. Kids.

“Nothing has ever made me prouder being a soldier, a Canadian — a human being — than seeing people who literally had nothing start to have something because of what we were doing there,” he says. “To be honest with you, the job we were doing was worth my life.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/08/the-job-was-worth-my-life-veteran-tells-of-surviving-a-mortar-bomb-and-ied-attack-and-helping-afghans/feed/5stdTSA050714_AdamWest02.jpgTHE CANADIAN PRESS/Murray BrewsterMichael Den Tandt: Now that our Afghan mission is over, we need to do right by those who servedhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/13/michael-den-tandt-now-that-our-afghan-mission-is-over-we-need-to-do-right-by-those-who-served/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/13/michael-den-tandt-now-that-our-afghan-mission-is-over-we-need-to-do-right-by-those-who-served/#commentsThu, 13 Mar 2014 22:24:25 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=147672

There are three questions worth asking about the Afghan mission, which lasted 12 years and claimed the lives of 162 Canadians — 158 soldiers, two aid workers, a diplomat and a journalist: Were we right to go? Can we be proud of what our country did there? And are we right to leave, though the war is anything but won?

The answers, perhaps paradoxically, are yes, yes and yes.

It is easy today, with the mission long off front pages, to forget the spirit that animated it at the outset. It was in 2005 that the decision was taken — by Prime Minister Paul Martin, Defence Minister Bill Graham and Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier — to put Canadians in Kandahar in significant numbers. There had been important Canadian military engagement in Afghanistan since 2002; but the conflict hit the public consciousness in earnest in early 2006, when it suddenly became widely apparent our soldiers were in a shooting war.

Should they not have been there? There was spirited debate, with armchair strategists citing the long historical record of failed military adventures in Afghanistan by various empires. There has been much discussion of why Martin agreed to put Canada in the volatile and dangerous south, rather than the east or north. Was it Hillier who drove that? Was it Martin’s desire to appease and impress the Bush administration with Canada’s martial worth?

Related

The bottom line, it seemed to me then and seems to me now, is that one way or another Canada was right to go because our closest allies went, in great numbers, and for a just cause; initially because the perpetrators of the killings of thousands of civilians on 9/11 had been harboured by the Afghan Taliban regime; secondly because, given a choice between trying to help the Afghans rebuild, and not trying, it was right to try. Someone had to stand post in Kandahar. It is to Canada’s great credit that our soldiers did.

So, question two: Yes, we should be proud of what they did there. Critics will say the mission was tarnished by the detainee scandal, which saw Afghan prisoners turned over to the tender mercies of Afghan government security forces, who mistreated and tortured them. That did tarnish the mission, badly. In particular the Harper government’s incompetent attempts to deflect the detainee allegations, when they first emerged, tarnished the mission.

But the decision not to establish Canadian-run Afghan prisons — realistically, the only way of ensuring prisoners were treated according to Canadian standards — was not taken by soldiers. Soldiers had to deal with the consequences of that decision. I remember speaking with a Canadian doctor at the medical centre at Kandahar Airfield, on my second trip there in the fall of 2007, about the counter-intuitive practice of treating wounded insurgent battlefield prisoners, under guard, then setting them free once they were able to walk. There was no place to keep them, she told me. Was that her fault? No.

Meanwhile, I and many other witnesses routinely saw Canadian soldiers risk life and limb to deliver aid and provide security to aid workers, and ordinary Afghans. For teachers, doctors, merchants, the international mission was a lifeline. Among the greatest scandals of the war politically, in my view, was the way in which the Liberal party, having decided to send more troops in 2005, promptly turned tail in 2006, after it fell from power — leaving the Harper government to carry the can alone until after the Manley Report in 2008, which led to a semblance of bipartisanship. Canada’s Afghan war was never a “combat mission,” as it was so often described. It was a reconstruction mission in which there was much combat, which is not the same thing.

All of which leads to question three: If all of the above is true, how can we be right to leave? The answer, though sad, is brutally simple. There is a shelf-life on any military engagement, however noble its aims, in a democratic society. In 2008 it was already apparent the clock was ticking and that the ultimate arbiter of success would be the Afghan government, and its willingness or ability to professionalize the Afghan National Police, crack down on internal corruption, and sideline the drug lords within its own ranks, among other challenges. Instead President Hamid Karzai dawdled, and in fact began regularly speaking of the international mission as though it were an occupation. If one examines the timing, that was the beginning of the end.

More than 40,000 Canadians served in the mission that ended this week. Many of them came home wounded, visibly or invisibly. Rather than endlessly parse the question of whether they should have gone, it’s time we paid much more attention to how they’re faring now. Are you listening, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Minister Julian Fantino? Soldiers did their job, it was a hard job, and that job is over. Now we should do ours.

Canadian Border Services AgencyUsually, three dots are seen together in a triangle, signifying prison, hospital and cemetery, representing the path and ultimate end of a gang lifestyle. The dots are usually the first tattoo received before someone becomes a full gang member. They can also mean “my crazy life” (mi vida loca). They are associated with the Mexican mafia.

MCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraMaster Corporal (MCpl) Jordan Taylor, a member of the Canadian Contribution to the Training Mission in Afghanistan (CCTM-A) stands on parade during the flag lowering ceremony at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters on March 12, 2014, which marks the end of Operation ATTENTION and the twelve-year military involvement in Afghanistan.

The Canadian PressCanadian soldier Cpl. Darren Fitzpatrick is shown in an undated military handout photo.

MCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraMaster Corporal (MCpl) Jordan Taylor salutes as the Canadian flag is lowered at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters on March 12, 2014 as a symbol of the end of Operation ATTENTION and the twelve-year military mission in Afghanistan.

As the Canadian flag inched its way down the pole Wednesday at NATO headquarters in Kabul, Master Cpl. Jordan Taylor didn’t necessarily see the red and white Maple Leaf.

The faces of friends who didn’t come home were before his eyes.

Taylor is a fresh-faced kid from Regina, and anyone looking at him would hardly be able to guess he’s a veteran of a unit that saw some of the fiercest fighting during the five-year combat mission in Kandahar.

“I’ve had some good friends who’ve lost their lives here,” said Taylor, who helped haul down the flag on Canada’s longest-ever military mission.

“I see their faces all the time, always remember them. So, that’s what I was reflecting on.”

One buddy in particular came to mind: Cpl. Darren Fitzpatrick.

He died in an Edmonton hospital after being wounded in a roadside bomb attack in March 2010. The two of them joined the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry together. They hung out and watched out for each other.

The wounds this country has inflicted were on quiet, subtle display at the understated ceremony before the headquarters building.

Sprinkled through crowd of three dozen Canadians who stood at attention were troops who’d returned to Afghanistan three, four, even five times in the dozen years the army has been involved in trying to stabilize the fractured nation.

The first Canadian casualties to die were on the mind of Chief Warrant Officer Bill Crabb, who served the first battle group dispatched by Jean Chretien’s Liberal government in spring 2002.

Four soldiers died when a U.S. Air Force pilot mistakenly bombed them believing their training exercise was a real attack on Kandahar Airfield.

“I was thinking of the people we lost over here,” said Crabb. “I was involved in the first strike, the friendly-fire incident in 2002.”

“I went out to help recover the heroes we brought back that day. And in my [next] tour here we lost 23 guys. I couldn’t help but think of them and the sacrifices they made.”

That kind of raw reflection was etched on many faces.

The finality of what took place was only underscored as the last handful of training troops, kitted out in full combat gear, trudged through a soccer field adjacent to the headquarters to board American helicopters for a trip to a holding camp before boarding flights out of the country.

The last pair of Canadian boots to step off the grounds of the headquarters and on to the ramp belonged to Col. Ivy Miezitis, who according to officers watching the departure seemed to dawdle in hopes of snagging the historical footnote.

During the understated ceremony, dignitaries — Canadian and allied alike — praised the country’s involvement and sacrifices.

“Your strength has protected the weak; your bravery has brought hope to hopeless; and the helping hand you have extended to the Afghan people has given them faith that a better future is within their grasp,” Deborah Lyons, Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, told an assembly of the last 100 soldiers who served on a three-year training mission.

The war cost the lives of 158 soldiers, one diplomat, one journalist and two civilian contractors.

“We can wish that the families of the fallen do not lament their fate, but we know that this is not the case. The only small comfort comes from the knowledge that the sacrifices of lost loved ones has been worthwhile, that they made a difference, and that their grief is shared by a grateful nation.”

MCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraMajor-General Dean Milner, last Commander of the Canadian Contribution to the Training Mission in Afghanistan (CCTM-A), hands over the Canadian flag to Deborah Lyons, Canada's Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, as a symbol of the continued Canadian support to Afghanistan during the flag lowering ceremony on March 12, 2014 at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Murray BrewsterMaj.-Gen. Dean Milner, the last Canadian commander in Afghanistan, poses for a photo in Kabul on Monday. Despite the end of the over 12 years military involvement, Milner says it's important Canada and the rest of the international community remain engaged to complete the work started during the war.

“It is said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. Your actions and those of your fallen colleagues have stopped the triumph of evil.”

Canadian commandos, hunting Al-Qaeda, were the first troops to hit the ground in late 2001 and they were followed by as many as 40,000 more rotating through different campaigns, including the five-year combat mission in Kandahar.

British Lt.-Gen. John Lorimer, the deputy commander of NATO in Afghanistan, said the Canadians “repeatedly proved their courage and capability” alongside coalition and Afghan troops, especially in Kandahar “where you not only fought hard, but you fought smart.”

Calling it the end of a significant era, Lorimer said he viewed the departure of the Canadians with “mixed emotions” given the shared experiences of the last 12 years.

“I am sad to see you return home, yet grateful for opportunity to have served alongside such great Canadian leaders along the way,” he said.

The country’s top military commander, Gen. Tom Lawson, spoke about how the government will rally around its veterans now that they’re home.

“We will gather around and continue to support those who suffer from wounds both seen and unseen,” Lawson said in a reference to the suicide crisis that has gripped the military since last fall.

The Defence Department has acknowledged that as many as 10 soldiers — possibly more — have taken their own lives since November. Officials have also faced repeated questions about promises to hire more military mental health staff, to deal with an expected wave of post traumatic stress cases, have gone unfulfilled.

The last Canadian commander, Maj.-Gen. Dean Milner, said the mission taking place over the last three years has been invaluable preparation for the Afghan army, but the progress made is not irreversible and the West needs to continue nurturing both military and civilian institutions.

Ambassador Lyons said Canada will remain engaged in Afghanistan and the focus will be on helping build the ruined nation’s economy, particularly in the resource sector.

MCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraThe last Canadians involved in the NATO training mission in Afghanistan (CCTM-A) board an American Chinook helicopter, on March 12, 2014 as they leave the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan.

MCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraThe last Canadians involved in the NATO training mission in Afghanistan (CCTM-A) fly off on an American Chinook helicopter, escorted by an American Blackhawk helicopter on March 12, 2014 as they leave the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan.

AP Photo/Anja NiedringhausAfghan women beg in the street for money in the centre of Kandahar, Afghanistan, Wednesday, March 12, 2014.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/12/lowering-the-maple-leaf-for-the-final-time-canada-pulls-last-troops-from-afghanistan-after-12-years/feed/0galleryMaster Cpl. Daniel Choong, left, Cpl. Harry Smiley, centre, and Cpl . Gavin Early take down the Canadian flag for the last time in Afghanistan on Wednesday, bringing an end to 12 years of military involvement in a campaign that cost the lives of 158 soldiers.MCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraThe Canadian PressMCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraMCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraTHE CANADIAN PRESS/Murray BrewsterMCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraMCpl Patrick Blanchard, Canadian Forces Combat CameraAP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus‘Bringing first-world medicine’ to Kandahar: Afghanistan war sparks trauma-care revolutionhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/25/kandahar-air-field/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/25/kandahar-air-field/#commentsTue, 26 Feb 2013 02:18:01 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=273633

Despite being located on a far-flung military base that is surrounded by desert and shot at by insurgents, the combat hospital in Afghanistan where Canadian casualties were treated had a mortality rate as impressive as sophisticated trauma centres in the West, suggests a new study.

The authors, including a Toronto doctor, credit in part a novel system that used teams of different specialists to treat each severely injured patient, a concept they say could be adopted by hospitals here.

The success of the so-called Role-3 hospital – which was run by the Canadian Forces for four years – came despite a flood of patients during the period studied, noted Dr. Andrew Beckett, the paper’s Canadian co-author.

In just over a year, as the U.S. “surge” of new troops took hold in southern Afghanistan, the Kandahar Air Field facility saw almost 2,600 trauma patients, including many Canadians.

Don McArthur / Postmedia News FilesA wounded Canadian soldier is carried into a helicopter
at Camp Nathan Smith for evacuation to the hospital at Kandahar Air
Field.

That compares to about 1,000 a year at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre –Canada’s busiest regional trauma centre – and 500 at St. Michael’s, the Toronto area’s other hospital specialized in treating serious injury, said Dr. Beckett.

“It’s amazing that we could then pull off that very low in-hospital mortality rate,” said the army major, who also works as a trauma surgeon at St. Michael’s. “You’re essentially bringing first-world medicine over to Afghanistan, which is really an incredible feat.”

Fewer than one in 20 succumbed to their wounds at the Kandahar clinic, concluded the study published recently in the journal Injury. That 4.4% mortality rate is actually better than what has been reported in North America, with the Ontario Trauma Registry, for instance, indicating that 12% of such patients died in hospital in 2009-10.

Dr. Beckett noted, though, that a direct comparison is difficult, since the patients in Afghanistan were generally younger and fitter than those here, and typically were transferred rapidly to other hospitals, where some might have later died.

He spent three months working at the Kandahar facility in 2010, an experience he says has certainly helped him personally since returning to Toronto.

MCpl Kevin Paul / Canadian Forces Combat CameraAn Afghan National Police constable with many wounds gets head-to-toe treatment at the airfield’s Role 3 medical facility. While civilian surgeon Doctor Vivian McAlister of Canada sutures a head wound, surgeon Colonel Arie Van Der Krans of the Royal Netherlands Army sutures lacerations on his toes. Overseen by Canadians, the Role 3 facility offers all the services available at most city hospitals in Canada.

“I’m taking all the things I learned in Afghanistan and bringing them to the trauma bay at St. Mike’s,” he said. “So with the recent gun shots we have had here in Toronto, I can bring those processes I learned in Kandahar back to Canada.”

This country led the Kandahar hospital from 2006 to October 2009, winning a prestigious NATO honor for its work, before handing over the reins to the U.S. Navy. About the same time, the original, plywood-walled building was replaced with a solid new structure. The study covered the period October 2009 to December 2010, when Canadian doctors, nurses and other professionals still made up about a third of the staff.

It saw 2,599 trauma patients in that period, an average of 173 a month, including 1,407 NATO soldiers, 312 Afghan security force members, 581 other locals, 102 civilian contractors and 197 pediatric cases.

IED explosions were by far the most common source of injury, followed by gunshot wounds, vehicle crashes and wounds from artillery, mortars or rockets, the study found. The patients during that 14 months included 19 with triple amputations, usually two legs and an arm blown off, said Dr. Beckett.

Chris Hondros/Getty ImagesCapt. Anne Lear, the head nurse at the Kandahar Role 3 Hospital, comforts a soldier as he arrives after being wounded on the battlefield June 18, 2010 at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan.

“The first time you see somebody from a major IED blast, it can be fairly overwhelming to look at; you’ve just never seen an injury pattern like that before,” he said. “But with some guidance and mentoring, it generally becomes routine.”

By 2010, the hospital staff included trauma-team leaders, anesthetists, orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, critical-care specialists, family doctors, neurologists, ophthalmologists and oral-maxillofacial surgeons – working together in a “multi-disciplinary” approach.

When patients arrived, several physicians and other team members would gather in the trauma bay to assess and begin treating patients, moving them down a sort of “assembly line” that made ample use of two CT scanners and other diagnostic-imaging gear, said Dr. Beckett.

That differs from the practice at civilian hospitals, where, for instance, patients are often sent away to the radiology department, but the imaging specialists do not come to the trauma bay to get directly involved in treatment, he said.

Hampered by an increasingly hostile work environment and a bureaucratic culture that discouraged innovation, Canada’s aid blitz in Afghanistan seemed at times “divorced from reality” in the war-ravaged country, concludes a previously secret review of the $1.5-billion program.

It and other audits of the Canadian International Development Agency’s huge involvement in Kandahar and elsewhere in Afghanistan depict a well-meaning drive for results the government could boast about — a push that faced “intractable” security problems, political pressures and the “vaguely envisaged” challenge of building a new nation.

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The reports drafted for CIDA by two outside consultants seem written to avoid offending federal officials, and do actually praise many of the agency’s achievements. But the diplomatic phrasing cannot hide fundamental concerns about Canada’s ambitious development program as it unfolded.

Nipa Banerjee, who headed the agency’s Afghanistan operation from 2003 to 2006, said some of the comments reflect what she knows about Canadian projects in Kandahar.

“All the projects have failed. None of them have been successful,” said Ms. Banerjee, now a professor in the University of Ottawa’s school of international development. “I think we went into Kandahar to increase our international profile … rather than thinking about the interests of the people of Kandahar. It was too much politicized and militarized and securitized, and as a result we ended up with failure.”

All the projects have failed. None of them have been successful

Despite the hard work, courage and sacrifices of civilian and military personnel, Canada’s development efforts in Kandahar province have proven a “total” waste, she argued. She still visits Afghanistan about four times a year to advise government ministries.

One of the reviews obtained by the National Post under access-to-information legislation notes that a key goal of Canada’s development program was to bolster the capacity of Afghans to improve their own lot and carry on rebuilding long after foreign nations had left. If the aim is to have “Afghan girls and boys actually learning in functional schools,” for instance, there needs to be local school committees to monitor results, not just a drive to erect buildings, it said.

But the Kandahar action plan that guided Canada’s priority projects for the restive, crumbling province did little to ensure locals could and would take part, said the document.

“The impression is of a major planning effort, meticulously documented, but divorced from reality,” said the consultants. “Artificially maintaining forward progress on a few indicators so that there is something positive to report (eg more training, more equipment, more schools built) is much like pushing a rope, and may be actually counterproductive if it ignores deeper institutional problems.”

The three reports from 2008 to 2009 appear to be the last produced by the “ongoing review of the CIDA Afghanistan program” but have remained under wraps until now. In fact, the agency initially denied an access-to-information request for them, filed in August, 2011, and only released a heavily redacted version of the documents this month after the Post complained to the federal Information Commissioner.

The agency was unable to respond to questions about the reviews by deadline on Friday. But in a report to Parliament this March, the government said that despite the challenges, Canada had played a “vital” role in rebuilding Afghanistan and made “important progress.”

“At every turn, our soldiers and civilian professionals in Afghanistan showed the highest level of dedication to the challenges they faced,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a foreword to the report. “Their immeasurable moral commitment to this mission has improved the lives of the Afghan people. They have made Canada and Canadians proud.”

Of 44 development goals this country set in 2008, 33 have been met, it said. Those include building 52 schools and training 3,000 teachers in Kandahar, repairing the province’s Dahla Dam and Arghandab irrigation system so that an extra 30,000 hectares more land could soon be irrigated, and improving the rule of law in Kandahar, said the report.

Ms. Banerjee said her sources tell a different story. All three of Canada’s main priority projects in Kandahar have been a bust, or of limited success, she charged. The plan to refurbish the Dahla irrigation dam in the north of Kandahar province never was finished, leaving farmers’ fields almost as dry as before, she said. The U.S. Corps of Engineers has stated it will take over and repair the dam, the Canadians having fixed many of the irrigation canals south of it. Many of the schools built with Canadian money appear in disrepair, unused or under-used, she said. And the program to vaccinate children for polio was actually carried out by UNICEF with Canadian funding, and has nevertheless failed to erase Kandahar city’s status as “the world polio capital.”

Brian Hutchinson/National PostFrom Brian Hutchinson on Tuesday April 26, 2011: The school at Chalghowr in Panjwaii district was to have opened by the time we arrived. Canadians had poured money into the building's restoration, and the place was looking good. But local elders--the men who make decisions on behalf of their communities--were dithering. There was no consensus on certain issues. Who would act as school caretaker? Who would supply the teachers, and could they be trusted? And what about security? Could anyone guarantee that insurgents would not attack they school? Instead of a grand opening, a shura--or meeting--was held at the school. It was a typical Panjwaii gathering. Lots of opinions and shouting. One group of men hived off from the meeting; eventually they just left, leaving Canadian soldiers to try and reach agreements with the others, as Afghan troops looked on

Prof. Banerjee oversaw the CIDA program in Afghanistan — doling out $100-million a year with no staff to help her — until Canada’s decision in 2006 to take over the military and development responsibility for Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. Canada had a choice between it and Herat, a much more peaceful and prosperous province in the west of Afghanistan, she said.

Prof. Banerjee admits that she recommended moving into Kandahar, feeling that it had far greater needs and, at the time, did not seem particularly unsafe. She said she now realizes the insurgency had nevertheless been building strength and, in retrospect, believes Kandahar was the wrong province for Canada, its relatively small military unable to curb the mounting violence.

In the first half of the 2000s, Canada’s contribution to Afghanistan was mostly in the form of contributions to programs run by the Afghan government, filtered through the World Bank, and most have been a success, she said.

As Canada took over responsibility for Kandahar, though, the push was to devote at least half its development money to the province and, encouraged by the 2008 Manley report to the Harper government, pursue Canadian-initiated, “showing the flag” projects, noted one of the reviews.

Each of the documents notes that the smattering of civilian officials who arrived in the country to implement the programs encountered an increasingly bloody insurgency.

Stabilizing and rebuilding Kandahar is not like “laying the railroad across Canadian prairies,” said the April, 2009, report, noting that insurgents had turned many of the areas targeted for development into conflict zones that were “strongly, even violently antiethical” to the national government and its foreign backers.

“This sets up an intractable development dilemma,” said a 2008 report. “The monitoring of progress and performance — key to credibility in Afghanistan and accountability in Canada — is literally death defying.”

The monitoring of progress and performance — key to credibility in Afghanistan and accountability in Canada — is literally death defying

What is more, the Taliban’s “visceral” understanding of the local society and politics leave the national government and its foreign backers at a “profound” disadvantage, said the November, 2009, report.

“Insurgents are living among the people as a fish in the sea [in Chairman Mao’s famous image], while the government and its international supporters are at best treading water,” the document said. “Is the Canadian mission doing enough to understand the context in which it works and the actors with whom it is engaged?”

One of the reports notes that being innovative and flexible is “absolutely essential” to prevailing in a counterinsurgency operation. The author concludes in another document, though, that the Canadian effort fell “far short” of the creativity shown by other donor agencies working in Afghanistan.

“CIDA is not an innovative organization,” the report stated bluntly, adding that a culture of “this is the way we do things” was part of the “genetic code” of the Afghanistan task force, the broader Canadian government group that headed the development push.

Ultimately, even determining if Canada was making a difference would be a challenge, suggested the February, 2008, report. Development work in Afghanistan centres around “state building,” but precisely measuring the progress toward that nebulous goal is all but impossible, the consultant said.

“It is crucial to understand that there is a built-in disconnect between … the donors’ appetite for hard evidence that their money is producing the intended results and, on the other hand, the vagueness of state building, characterized by false starts, dead ends and trial-and-error innovation.”

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/12/canadas-1-5b-afghanistan-aid-effort-divorced-from-reality-according-to-damning-previously-unreleased-documents/feed/18stdA U.S. Army soldier of 5-20 Infantry Regiment attached to 82nd Airborne Division, aims his rifle in front of a bullet riddled map of Afghanistan painted on a wall of an abandoned Canadian-built school in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan June 9, 2012AfghanistanToday's letters: Kandahar Journal: ‘What journalism was and should still be’http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/10/todays-letters-kandahar-journal-what-journalism-was-and-should-still-be/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/10/todays-letters-kandahar-journal-what-journalism-was-and-should-still-be/#commentsWed, 10 Oct 2012 10:00:58 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=93274

Re: Kandahar Journal, six-week series by Richard Johnson.
I want to thank Richard Johnson for the exceptional job he has done in Afghanistan. He has brought the human story to the fore and provided a degree of clarity to the highly complex geo-political issues through the eyes of the serving men and women in theatre. His ability to let your subjects tell the story rather than imposing your own agenda is a refreshing return to what journalism was and should still be.
It is very evident that he has gained the trust and confidence of the troops he accompanied, which is no small feat in itself. I have had the pleasure through my current position and work with the Canadian Forces Liaison Council to meet many of our members who have served and are currently serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere (my son is currently deployed but not in Afghanistan) and to hear their stories first hand. I can only assume it is Mr. Johnson’s skill and sensitivity as an artist that gives him the insight to capture the subjects in a time and place that conveys both the physical and emotional situation as a whole. The monochromatic nature of the sketches plus his amazing eye for detail portrays the juxtaposition of the human, technical and the stark environment in which they coexist.
A very big Bravo Zulu (well done) to Mr. Johnson. I hope there will be an opportunity to see a compilation of all your work in Afghanistan at some point. Stephen C. Millen, Honorary Colonel, 442 Search and Rescue Squadron, Lazo, B.C.

I have been following Richard Johnson’s journal and articles in the paper. It’s very real for me, having been in Kabul in June. He is giving Canadians a good feel for what it’s really like on the ground. Most probably thought because we are in a training role in Afghanistan that there is not much going on. Mr. Johnson’s articles are letting them know that our troops are working very hard, and that on a daily basis they are in harm’s way. Keep up the great reporting. Colonel GD Reamey, Honorary Colonel, The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin & Halton Regiment), Oakville, Ont.

Re: ‘I’m Worried For Them,’ Oct. 6.
Thanks for featuring one of Richard Johnson’s inspirational drawings on the Post’s front page for its Thanksgiving edition. From his vantage point at camp Apache in Afghanistan, the whole situation looks bleak.
“The enemy knows exactly what to do to get what he wants” is a very blunt statement from a neutral observer with a pencil for a weapon and a mind as sharp as a blade. Not a very optimistic outlook but his words led me to the article in the same edition, about the Everest climb by a band of brothers (injured Canadian soldiers and civilians) to raise awareness about injured soldiers getting back into society after experiencing the horror of war and becoming a casualty as a result of it.
In the words of Lt. Michelle Quinton-Hickey: “When war is over and the conflict is over, the injuries are not over.” Come home safe, all of you. Gilles Chateau, Toronto.

Romney or Obama?

Which U.S. presidential candidate would be better for Canada? Send 75-word answers to letters@nationalpost.com until Friday at 2 EDT, with replies to be published on Oct. 15. Include your name and address.

Prison chaplain cut more than ‘hypocritical’

Re: Funding Cut For Minority Faith Prison Chaplains, Oct. 6.
To remove funding for minority prison chaplaincy while leaving only the Christian chaplaincy intact leaves one to draw their own conclusions for this move. It can’t be the cost as that is wholly insignificant. I listened to Candice Bergen, parliamentary secretary to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, explain that minority religious group could have “spiritual” guidance from the Christian chaplains. How could a religious representative of the Christian faith provide spiritual guidance to a Muslim, Hindu, or a Jew? She then said that volunteers from the minority faiths would have access to their constituents.
If it’s money they wish to save, why not have volunteers from the Christian community give spiritual guidance to their prison constituents?
NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar says the move is “hypocritical.” Maybe so. But it might appear to some that it is much more than that. Marvin Sharpe, Victoria.

An unfit mother

Re: Accused In Stabbing A ‘Good Wife,’ ‘Good Mother,’ Oct. 5.
Johra Kaleki hacked her innocent Canadian daughter with a meat cleaver almost to death for “rebelling against her religion,” that is, for staying out late. Then she was released on bail in two months to “care for three daughters still in the house.”
Care? For daughters she did not yet mutilate with a cleaver?
As Canadians, we have a duty to protect our children, no matter what background they came from. The daughters should be immediately assigned to a good foster family, to save their lives and future in our country. Or else the bail for Ms. Kaleki should be revoked, and the daughters left to be cared for by their father, if his protestations of innocence are deemed trustworthy. Zbigniew Filek, Vancouver.

An unfit MP

Re: Me And My Paranoia, Rob Anders diary, as imagined by Tristin Hopper, Oct. 6.
The amusing imagined thoughts of Conservative MP Rob Anders reminded me of a conversation a few weeks ago, when someone asked me which party I supported. I replied I would vote for a goat with nice glasses if it ran under the Conservative banner. She then asked if I would vote for Rob Anders. After a pause, I had to acknowledge that even I have my limits. Erik Larsen, Calgary.

Hatred of Jews ‘just is so’

Re: Anti-Semitism Without Jews, Robert Fulford, Oct. 6.
Robert Fulford is to be congratulated, as he almost always should be, on his brilliant depiction of the plight of the Jews throughout much of the world as exemplified by the attitude of Malaysia to Jews and Israel
It’s impossible to find a reason for hatred of Jews — but it just is so — and that is the universal truth. And Mr. Fulford expresses this truth with simple and clear elegance Stephen Posen, Toronto.

There is hardly anyone other than Robert Fulford to write with such clarity and accuracy about this and other mind diseases that affect humanity. And since many of his blinkered colleagues in Canadian journalism cannot stomach such self-evident truths, they will continue to simmer in the usual vacuity of leftist clichés.
If there is any single symptom that exacerbates anti-Semitism in the Arab/Muslim world and in Europe, it is Palestinianism. The notion that the “Palestinian cause” is a human rights issue, and that Israel is the sole party responsible for not solving it, is a 40-year-old hoax that has attracted many gullible followers. Salomon Benzimra, Toronto.

The Middle East and its politics are complex. But the one constant is the threat by many to eliminate Israel, the only country in the region which allows women to be free to study and work, homosexuals to be free from legal prosecution and where differences of opinion are celebrated. Gail Bocknek, Toronto.

Canadian rowing still in good shape

Re: Coach Fired For Rocking Boat, Christie Blatchford, Oct. 3.
In the wake of Rowing Canada’s announcement regarding its decision to part ways with long-time coach Mike Spracklen, I was very disappointed to read Christie Blachford’s column on this subject. She would have readers believe that Mr. Spracklen’s departure also means the departure of any hope of success for Rowing Canada on the international stage, and that the decision was made with no regard for the rowers. Although it cannot be disputed that he is an exceptionally talented coach, and Canadian rowers have enjoyed great success at the international level during his tenure, he is not without his faults, and critics.
The 2010 review of Rowing Canada, referenced only fleetingly and somewhat scornfully in this column, was conducted after some of the rowers questioned Mr. Spracklen’s coaching methods, and whether the end result truly justified the means. Keep in mind that he left Great Britain after the Sydney Olympics in 2000, after his contract was not renewed due to the divisive nature of his coaching methods.
It remains unclear where the ratio of Spracklen supporters and detractors truly lies here in Canada, as it is my personal belief that many within the inner circles of Rowing Canada have chosen to not comment on the matter. Regardless, rowing in Great Britain is far from dead after Spracklen’s departure, and so too can be the case in Canada. Karen Teufel, North Vancouver, B.C.

Ex-chief should stay home

Re: ‘We Want To … Try And Hum­anize The Iranian People, Oct. 5.
I don’t have a problem with ex-First Nations chief Terrance Nelson going to Iran seeking money for resources, housing, and health care for his people. I wish him luck in his endeavours. However, I as a taxpayer I refuse to spend a dime of my money to support this, as Iran is an enemy of Canada and an enemy to the free world.
Maybe Mr. Nelson should remember that Iran executed five young gay men, simply because they are homosexuals, along with young women for trumped-up charges of adultery.
For native-Canadians like Mr. Nelson, Canada was never and will never be their country, no matter how often we say we are sorry for what happened in residential schools or what is happening in reservations. They forget that First Nations residents fought in the War of 1812 and the world wars on the side of Canada, for the freedoms that we all enjoy now.
It’s hard to work with people like Mr. Nelson who hates us, and offers no solution to the problems. Laurent Joncas, Gatineau, Que.

More memories of strapping

Re: Strapping Vs. Real Abuse, letters to the editor, Oct. 6.
In the mid-1950s I was bused to a very tough school in East Calgary for the year. It was the first time I heard a foreign language, saw a black face or had lunch with kids in ragged clothes eating bacon dripping sandwiches.
At this school, strapping was de rigeur and the corporal punishment regime was run with military precision. Teachers would sentence miscreants to a certain number of strokes per hand (usually 2-6 , fewer for the girls), then the principal would deliver the punishment in his office at either noon or 4 p.m. At lunch, as many as a dozen students were outside his office, waiting their turn. Each was required to confess his sin and say how many strokes they were sentenced to. He used a leather strap, wielded with great gusto. He left his door open for maximum effect then hung the strap behind his desk after each session.
Fifty years ago most parents accepted this type of discipline, but not my mother. If that principal had tried it on me, my mother would have killed him.
That principal was my grandfather, a World War One Sgt.-Major, so he came by discipline naturally. He became a teacher after the war and eventually earned a PhD in botany. He was either brilliant or a tyrant, depending on your point of view, but he was always fully engaged. Allan Nicholson, Victoria.

In 1948, at recess, I was in the middle of a snowball fight. One of my snowballs went astray, smacking the face of a lady walking down the street. A school teacher happened to see the misfire and I was frogmarched into the school for three whacks on each hand.
Now, almost in my dotage, I look back on this event with the following observations: The strapping was well deserved and didn’t do me any psychological damage; I learned a valuable lesson — if you can’t hit what you are aiming at, don’t fire.
The second point has served me very well as time and a half goes by, both in life and hunting.
Maybe we should cut John Furlong some slack. Ted Whicker, Ottawa.

In 1960, when I was eight, my teacher sent me to the principal’s office to get the strap for reading a story in our reader about 20 pages ahead of the one she told the class to read. As I had enjoyed reading, I had already read that particular short story and didn’t see the logic of sitting there and re-reading it. I got three straps on one hand. Then I peed my pants. Norbert Kaysser, Port Coquitlam, B.C.

Child soldiers

Re: Readers Not Happy About Omar Khadr — Or Public Editors, Paul Russell, Oct. 6.
In Operation Mincemeat, a fascinating book about a very creative deception that fooled the Nazis and assured an allied victory in the 1943 Italian Campaign, there is a little gem that brought to mind the bleeding hearts who constantly refer to Omar Khadr as a child soldier. Alan Hillgarth, the naval attaché in Madrid who played a critical role in the operation, is described as the son of a London surgeon who entered the Royal Naval College at the age of 13, fought in the First World War as a 14-year-old midshipman (his first task was to assist the ship’s doctor during the Battle of Heligoland Bight by throwing amputated limbs overboard), and skewered his first Turk, with a bayonet, before his 16th birthday. At Gallipoli he found himself in charge of a landing craft as all the other officers had been killed. He was shot in the head and leg and spent the recovery time learning languages and cultivating a passion for literature. Dave McLean, Toronto.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/10/todays-letters-kandahar-journal-what-journalism-was-and-should-still-be/feed/0stdHead woundVillage elders wary after years of war in Afghanistanhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/12/village-elders-wary-after-years-of-war-in-afghanistan/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/12/village-elders-wary-after-years-of-war-in-afghanistan/#commentsWed, 12 Sep 2012 07:57:39 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=211706

Richard JohnsonClick to enlarge

Kandahar Air Field (KAF), Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.

In a village tucked inside a country most people could not find without Google maps, in an all-but-forgotten war, small battles are being won.

Over the past week, soldiers of U.S. Security Force Assistance Team (SFAT) 42 have assisted and advised the Afghan National Army’s 6th Kandak as it pushed the Taliban out of this small dusty valley leading down to the Arghandab River.

The operation is the culmination of more than six months of working behind the scenes to “assist and advise” the Afghan soldiers. In the end, the operation went flawlessly, with little or no ISAF support.

Now it is time to win the peace.

Richard JohnsonClick to enlarge

Colonel Altafullah, the 6th Kandak commander, has invited villagers to a shura (consultation), a sort of “town hall.”

For residents, the last week must have been a huge strain as mortars, planes and rockets passed over their homes.

In the months before, the Taliban attacked police checkpoints from these same villages.

Now, the villagers must be wondering what will happen next.

Related

Only the men turn up. Under the spreading limbs of a tree, in the interior courtyard of the police station that is really nothing more than a series of run-down mud buildings, they sit and wait. They do not seem afraid. Mostly they look inquisitive.

Life in this part of Afghanistan is harsh in ways most Westerners cannot grasp. Entire families work together just to ensure they have enough food and clothing and water to keep alive the small fields of grapes, figs, poppies and pomegranates.

These people are insular by necessity, and private by nature. The Taliban brand of religious severity and minimalism sits well with their daily lives.

So when a government most consider corrupt arrives on the back of a force of arms that contains Westerners, no matter how peripherally, it is easy to see why they would be skeptical.

Richard JohnsonClick to enlarge

Around the outside of the courtyard, a dozen or more Afghan Uniform Police (AUP) officers brandishing Kalashnikov AK-47s stand on the rooftops. Nearby are another dozen or so 6th Kandak soldiers, some with similar AK-47s.

There are a dozen more U.S. troops and a few high-ranking U.S. officers from other SFAT units who have just driven in at great risk — one convoy struck two improvised explosive devices en route — to attend this confrontation/peacemaking effort. They each have their own heavily armed security teams.

Everyone watches everyone else, while watching the hills.

Someone high up in ISAF has decided now is the time to go without body armour. In this cauldron of distrust, it seems like an empty and potentially fatal gesture.

There has been a surge of insider attacks — known as green on blue assaults — in Afghanistan, more than at any other time during this aging war. The assaults, in which Afghan soldiers and police fire on their ISAF partners, have killed 42 members of coalition forces this year and wounded dozens more.

The Afghan colonel sits on a chair in the sun. Everyone else is kneeling or squatting under the trees in the shade. For a few minutes no one says anything.

The village elder is the first to speak, the smallest of the villagers. He is upset they have not been offered tea — he feels tea is surely the bare minimum of etiquette for hosting a shura.

The colonel, clearly annoyed, responds, “I just came from a mission. We sent out AUP on a motorcycle to tell anyone to come to this shura and someone set off an IED near him.”

“We have to keep our friendship. We want to promote our country and keep our friendship. All of Afghan people are proud, and they have pride in being Afghan. We should be all the time working together. I am trying now to provide security to make that happen.”

The villagers say the last time they had contact with the government was in April when they ran a poppy eradication program. For the farmers who relied on the crop, the theft of their yield without any recompense or replacement left the door open to Taliban sympathy, which took root and flourished.

“The ANA is working for you,” Col. Altafullah said. “We should talk about peace. The ANA is part of your government. The Taliban are fighting against the Afghan government, but the government is saying, ‘Come and make peace with us. Put your weapons away and come and join the ANA or be a farmer.’ Only through this diplomacy can we be successful.”

Richard JohnsonClick to enlarge

Mohammad Zarif, the district governor and Mohammad Ashraf Naseri, the provincial governor, arrive in a motorcade of Humvees. The shura grinds to a halt.

These are the very men the villagers distrust so wholeheartedly and accuse of corruption and deceit. They bring their own phalanx of Afghan Security Service commandos.

The commandos keep their faces hidden, their sunglasses on and weapons handy. Even the most stoic villager appears concerned as the commandos take up positions around the walls.

Col. Altafullah appeals once more to the villagers before he hands the shura over to the unwelcome governors.

“What is jihad?” he asks. “Do you know the meaning of jihad? You kill a person, someone innocent, building a school, or building a mosque, this is not jihad.

“This is power. And the one fighting for power will never be satisfied. Anyone fighting for power is destroying himself. You should be happy now in your security and take responsibility for your village and your area.”

The diminutive village elder stands before all, a small man among a sea of bearded faces.

“The district governor is destroying us,” he said. “If you are coming and making a school or some other thing, we will help you and work with you. But instead you made a home for the district governor, you made offices for him, you made everything for ANA and AUP, but you never made anything for the villagers, no mosque or school.

Richard JohnsonClick to enlarge

“All of the money that is coming here is going in his pocket. I am disclosing all of the secrets of your ‘government.’ We have not seen the district governor here for six months. You promised much but fulfill on none of your promises.”

“The Americans came here,” Col. Altafullah responds. “They are helping and supporting us for 10 years. We are taking their money and killing them back.

“There are people who do not want Afghanistan to be quiet and safe. I wish that one day that all of Afghanistan be safe. That is my wish. We can build our country. But just now all we are doing is killing and being killed.”

The shura ends and the villagers return to their homes, and to an unrelenting war that for them is anything but forgotten.

An hour or less later, I was awoken by a mortar round fired from COP Mizan. A flare had been fired to illuminate the valley below. Someone had seen something and had called it in. The valley and villages below bathed in yellow was an eerie spectacle. It looked suddenly threatening after the lush green of earlier in the day.

Inside the Joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) truck Staff Sgt. Stevens was doing what the ANA cannot do — talking to absolutely everyone at once, and yet somehow keeping it all together. His job as JTAC means he has to listen to all the information through various radio nets, and delivered firsthand, and then relay all of that information to Captain Brian Reiser or Major Whitlock or higher, to make a decision on what happens next. He’ll then relay all of those decisions to pilots, drone operators, soldiers in the field and mortar operators or artillerymen in all forces. He accurately and quickly tailors information to allow ISAF forces to defend, attack and avoid friendly fire, both on the ground and in the air. He does it all while keeping a wry sense of humour, and smoking a Marlboro Red.

A report had come in of motorcycles crossing the Arghandab River — unusual movement after dark. Staff Sgt. Stevens tasked a fighter jet to overfly them at extremely low altitude and drop flares. Basically saying: “Beat it.”

Muhammad Jabar, the fellow Canadian and an Interpreter and Cultural Advisor to the U.S. forces, was standing by the back of the truck. He was watching flashlights in the blackness of the hillsides and listening to the Taliban on the radio. He was trying to figure out and read their signals to one another from both these things at once, then relaying his thoughts to Captain Reiser and JTAC Staff Sgt. Stevens. And just metres away, the ANA were listening in and watching the lights as well, hoping for a target to drop a mortar round on. Amazing.

Mr. Jabar “has a personal connection to this place. He will go above and beyond the call of duty, because he absolutely and utterly despises what is going on in this country. Honestly, if I gave that guy a rifle – if I had to – he would fight side-by-side with me, just like any one of my soldiers,” said Captain Reiser.

The flashlights up in the hills are far higher than any farms or population centres. It is from these locales that the Taliban have been using one or possibly two recoilless rifles to attack the hilltop ANP checkpoint. They have gotten wise to ISAF technology and never fire the weapon for long or from the same location twice. Staff Sgt. Stevens thinks they withdraw the weapon into a cave or under a tarpaulin. The Recoilless rifle is probably the most dangerous weapon in the Taliban arsenal aside from IEDs.

Tonight, though, they keep them under wraps or underground. After the flyover by the jets over the motorcycles along the Arghandab and the flares over Rhabajuy village things calm down and I really do head for bed.

I am awake at 5.00 a.m., happy to be feeling much better. There is hot food – brought up on a truck – consisting of scrambled powdered eggs, small not very appealing looking sausages, and some kind of hash brown mixed with corned beef. I manage to eat some eggs and sausage while shooting the breeze with the SFAT42 guys.

The SFAT42 team is finally in its element, I think. This is everything they have trained for. Helping and advising and assisting but not in any way doing – well, aside from providing air cover.

“They planned it. They rehearsed it. They executed it. We just filled in the blanks,” said Major Whitlock.

For their part, the ANA soldiers had had a very successful day yesterday. They found and cleared an IED and swept through the hostile villages, and were now atop the hill they had planned to secure, without a single casualty.

Just after first light the ANA began to send out patrols down the rest of the valley towards the Arghandab. With good combat spacing, the soldiers walked away from Tur-Muryani in the long slanting morning light. Each patrol took a different route down the hill, before eventually appearing like dots in the fields, orchards and villages below.

I took my sketchpad and sketched the valley and the descending ANA soldiers (see image at top of page), a beautiful scene aside from all the weaponry and bullets.

My Canadian interpreter friend Muhammud Jabar was sitting eating breakfast when I hunted him down again. It is hard not to be impressed by this young man. He moved out of Afghanistan with his four sisters and parents to England before eventually migrating to Canada and becoming a Canadian. Afghanistan has never been far from his thoughts.

I was working with an organization called Improving Afghan Lives, in Toronto. We used to send items and used clothes to an Orphanage in Kabul. We were often worried that the supplies were not really getting to the needy people,” he said.

Mr. Jabar wanted to do something where he could see the results firsthand. He was already in the process of applying for the police force when an opportunity came up with the Canadian Department of Defence (DOD). After getting through all of the security clearance, physicals and some basic training he found himself loaned out to the U.S. Army DOD on a unique personnel loan program. He has now been in Afghanistan for 10 months, taking only a two-week break.

“In the beginning the stress was overwhelming. It is a rough life. Sleeping on rocks, constant danger. But I am positive that I am making a difference. My mum and dad both know that I am working for the U.S. Army but they have no clue where I am right now. It is not that they are not willing to have me support Afghanistan, but they would think this is far too dangerous. Right now we are sitting in a warzone. There are IEDs right here — everywhere. I tell them I am working in a U.S. base and am very secure.”

Mohammud Jabar is far more than interpreter, with his skills as a cultural expert for both nations he solves problems before they even arise. He described a situation where he had to use his unique tact.

“During a meeting, the ANA were irate, because the U.S. Army promised that they would support with food and air support but somehow that didn’t happen. What they said was ‘We don’t want you on our next mission at all now, you are doing nothing for us.’ But what I translated however was that ‘The people of that small village are very sensitive to the presence of U.S. forces.’ Afterwards I explained the whole thing to my U.S. Commander. But we avoided a meaningless point of conflict.”

He doesn’t have a girlfriend, for fear that something will happen to him and that would ruin someone else’s life. He misses his friends back in Canada, his gym and Tim Hortons.

He makes me proud to be Canadian. And proud of him as an Afghan.

In the background, an earthshaking whoof of sound was the detonation of an IED. An ANA patrol had apparently found and detonated an anti-tank mine. Dealing with the problem themselves as usual.

Anti-tank mines show up in Afghanistan, Major Whitlock said, “brand new from countries like China and Italy. I have seen them myself.”

Then a sudden burp of machine gun fire from the valley below – then again. Then return fire.

“That is troops in contact,” said Major Whitlock.

Everyone moved at once. I grabbed my body armour, helmet and camera. The Afghan mortar team sent a round downrange that made both my ears ring as I squatted nearby. The ANA mortar guys then squinted into the distance looking for where their round had landed – firing for effect. Then – I assume – taking adjustments from the soldiers in the firefight on the ground – fired off two more rounds.

As I headed for the JTAC truck to find out what was really going on, another two mortar rounds whumped out over my head. Staff Sgt. Stevens was fairly busy. His vehicle had a great view over the valley below so he could see exactly what was going on and talk to his air assets in theatre. For the moment though he could not bring any to bear while the ANA mortars were going out. To help them out on the ground though he had Senior Airman Larez fire a few dozen rounds down range using the 50 Cal CROWS on top of the truck, more to keep Taliban heads down than anything.

“In Iraq I have seen one round from the fifty-Cal take the head off a cow,” Sgt. Barraza told me later.

The firing in the valley continued. I joined Sergeant First Class Patton and Lieutenant VanBuerden watching the action below from behind a rock wall (see art at top). The ANA mortar team fired another four rounds. In the dust from the mortars landing, it was increasingly difficult to pick anything out. The firing on the ground continued and the ANA sent another mortar downrange which only obscured things further. Colonel Altefullah was talking to his troops by radio nearby.

Eventually the contact was broken. The Taliban had dropped out of sight. So had the ANA. The best move for the Taliban now was to remain exactly where they were hidden in the orchards until well after dark. With no targets and possible friendlies and civilians in the mix, Staff Sgt. Stevens had the jets do a low screaming pass, to dissuade any further aggression. Then had the fighters pass again and drop flares to allow the ANA to withdraw. We had pushed the ANA line of control four kilometers into Taliban territory. We now knew where the new front line was.

For Major Whitlock and the rest of the SFAT42, the advisers, mentors and assisters to the ANA there had been really very little for them to do. Which meant that this SFAT mission – at least with this ANA Kandak – had been proven successful.

“They have turned this whole bowl into an intimidating war zone … it is a show of force, which was probably something they needed … they needed to know the government was in control,” said Major Whitlock.

But for the Afghan government, having its army win this skirmish of weaponry in a rural civilian area does little to endear them to the population. To ensure trust and safety, this area now needs to be secured by the police and local government.

“Winning their hearts comes about by being in touch with the local people on a regular basis. So we have established many Shuras in the next week with the local people in order to have a good relationship with them. But most important is this checkpoint that will make their lives secure,” said Colonel Altafullah.

There is something about Combat Outpost (COP) Mizan that has me going to sleep exhausted, and waking up refreshingly exhausted again. Something in the air maybe … or something about the heat, or the dust, or the looming oppressive mountains on all sides, or maybe the outbound mortars, or the sporadic sound of fire and returned fire? A feeling of exposure maybe? Or maybe I am just getting old.

COP Mizan has everything a body needs to survive of course; lots of razor wire and guard towers, food, cots, laundry, showers once a week, and more heavily armed U.S. soldiers than you would ever want to crash your pool party. Additionally a “friendly” Afghan National Army (ANA) Unit stationed right next door. It is those ANA that the U.S. is here to train.

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A variety of supporting outposts overlook the area around COP Mizan. From one of these outposts, the COP looks exposed and vulnerable in the bottom of the dry river valley surrounded by dust, shading to sand, then gravel, then rocks, then boulders then mountain.

Few helicopters make the run in to COP Mizan. It is designated “Red” so only helicopters with flanking security flights of gunships can make the landing. Fewer vehicles arrive by the road. It is designated ‘black’ so nothing can travel along it without a route clearance operation to push it through to the base. Food and supplies arrive by air-drop. Palettes are pushed out of the back of a C-130 high above the mountains. The parachutes, guided by computers and GPS drop the equipment right inside the base.

Mizan town used to have a thriving commercial area. A row of dusty one story mud buildings that local farmers could sell their wares from. Travelers on the road from Qalat City down towards the Arghandab River valley would stop and shop for pomegranates, figs and melons.

The town, which is tucked up against the COP is now an abandoned ghost town. One lone shopkeeper keeps his shutter closed. All the other shutters are gone. The only people visible are Afghan National Police (ANP) in their beige Ford Rangers and mismatched overlarge uniforms. The one-story mud buildings are slowly returning to sand.

Yesterday I went along on a foot patrol led by the ANA through Bayanzai the nearest village to what used to be the town and COP Mizan. I am here with a U.S. Security Force Assistance Team (SFAT) tasked with assisting the 6th Kandak Afghan National Army. They are here to observe and assist. In this case to ‘observe and assist’ a candy and clothes drop. The candy and clothes came through Master Sergeant Turner, via care packages from people back in the U.S.

The ANA patrol – with additional elements from COP Mizan, and my SFAT guys – moved off through a hole in the wire. First we walked through dry seemingly abandoned fields, then crossed a deep cut and river valley, before moving up through pomegranate fields and over irrigation. The feeling of life was instantly overwhelming when we got close. Kids of all sizes ran along the length of the patrol. By the time we got to the village proper the kiddie ‘intel’ has been passed and they are all standing round staring at Master Sergeant Turner with his garbage bag of goodies over his shoulder. Just like a big camouflage Santa covered in ammo.

The patrol pushed out security elements to all four corners, and an impromptu Shura took place with the available village elder. Major Whitlock and a variety of ANA and interpreters sat down with him in the shade of his front porch for tea. While they did their thing I took the opportunity to wander around and take pictures of the kids and chat to some of the soldiers. The threat level right here feels non-existent.

The kids are beautiful like almost all Afghan children I have seen. I swear it could be the same group of beautiful kids in each village. They seem as happy, carefree, lively and inquisitive as any kids anywhere. The shadow of living within the base finally starts to lift. The ANA hand out candy. Making sure every kid gets some. I work the camera on the crowd of youngsters, and the incongruity of their juxtaposition to the heavily armed soldiers is stark.

One of the interpreters spotted the Canadian flag on my body armour. This is the second time this has happened to me on this trip. Mohammad Jabar is from Richmond Hill in Ontario. He is both an intelligence and cultural advisor on assignment from our own Department of Defence (DND) to the U.S. DOD. It is an essential role in which he not only translates but dampens frictions between Afghans and U.S. forces. He can do this because he understands not only both languages, but also both cultures.

“We hade a foot patrol mission and the U.S. forces I was advising wanted to search a mosque. We had a report that there were Taliban hiding. The villagers were very much against this entrance to the mosque by non-Muslims. I explained that to my commander and suggested we let the ANA do the search, and everyone agreed. Things like that have lessened the tension. Next time we entered the village we were pretty much welcome,” he said.

We chatted for a bit about Toronto while the village kids swarmed around. It felt good to talk about home. With his help I spoke to one of the few fighting-age men in the village who was squatting by the edge of the Shura.

“I feel safe being so close to the U.S. base,” said Hamidullah, a 24-year-old fig farmer and father of a baby girl. “Before the Americans were here, we had problems with Taliban … they would move through and harass us and beat the shit out of us.”

This village is particularly friendly to the ISAF forces, but they say they are very happy to see their own military here as well.

“At first we reacted badly because we were not comfortable with the [American] religion and culture. But afterwards when we saw the Americans working together with the Afghan National Security Forces. We were much happier. We consider them as assistant troops to the ANSF. We no longer care about religion or culture,” he said.

This seems like exactly what the SFAT guys want to hear, and bodes well for a gradual removal of U.S. forces and an eventual ANA takeover. But there is an open understanding within ISAF that the local Afghans will tell you exactly what you want to hear. Believing it might be a mistake.

My interview with Hamidullah is interrupted by screams and running children as the bag of goodies has been handed over. They swarm around an old man handing things out. There is no sign of elder respect in this crowd as everyone reaches in and the old fellow gets ambushed. But they are all laughing. No one is upset. In this land of severity and extremes, it is refreshing to see such worry-free happiness.

Out of the chaos of kids running hither and yon with clothes and candy and pens and paper, the patrol moves out for the hike back to base. When we get inside I talk to Major Whitlock about what he learned from his Shura.

“The underlying theme was that ‘We can’t turn in the Taliban’ and ‘What are we supposed to do? If we turn them in they will kill us,’ ” said Major Whitlock.

Back at the base I listen in as the various intel guys report what they had heard from the kids. The children are apparently much more forthcoming.

“They said ‘They (Taliban) are always up in the hills walking around. At least four or five times a month.’” said one soldier.

For the people in the village near the base their future is uncertain in the same way that the ANA’s ability to function and protect them is uncertain. But perhaps together there is a solution in the making here. Perhaps.

“We don’t know what is going to happen, but I want to see the Afghans protecting Afghans. But what do I know? I am just a local guy with no education at all.” said Hamidullah.

Richard Johnson / National PostPrivate Jason Clark playing guitar by the Hesco barrier.

Last night sometime after midnight I came across this scene of a U.S. PFC Jason Clark playing guitar in front of a fire pit. The bright light of the pit was hidden from the outside world by the compound wall. With the temperature so warm here even at night, the fire was superfluous, but at the same time kind of charming. It would be easy to believe that PFC Clark was anywhere in the world, anywhere but a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan. He had a small audience of soldiers and was obviously completely content in his playing. One of the other soldiers confided in me that Clark had in fact joined the army to further his music career. I looked quizzically at him, but he couldn’t see that. It was too dark. I sat for a while and enjoyed the playing. No matter what his reasons for joining, he seemed to have found a home in the Army. The music was haunting.

First thing this morning after four hours sleep – (thanks, Mick) – I joined my adopted group as they pre-mission checked on their military vehicles and weaponry. They were checking essential details like, that the brakes worked, the radios operated, and that machine guns fired. I did this sketch of Second Lieutenant Lee Collins working on oiling up and preparing the M2-50Cal on top of a MAT-V (top above).

While they did that, I busied myself with figuring out how I could mount my GoPro cameras to the outside of the vehicles. I have a couple of cameras and I hope to find a way to get different angles each time we roll out the front gate. That way I cam piece it all together into one film later on. The first camera I mounted in a gun turret by duct-taping it to a vertical stanchion beside the grenade launcher. This one will swing side to side as the gunner tracks potential threats. Whatever the gunner points at the camera ‘should’ point at as well. I had the gunner make sure it wouldn’t be in his way. The second camera posed more of a challenge. The outside of the armoured vehicles are covered in “bird cage” netting. The netting is designed to catch and/or disarm a rocket propelled grenade. I am all about the bird cage. However, I worried that if I mounted my camera inside the netting, it might focus on the netting and not what was beyond. It took awhile but I managed to find a spot where I could mount the camera to the bird cage frame and have it poke through the netting. I double checked with the driver on that vehicle as well and received the thumbs up. If and when we roll out, the mounts would be ready for the cameras.

The rest of my day today was filled with a variety of necessary nonsense. I did some laundry – my six day supply was six days late for resupply. I attended some meetings on our upcoming mission. I got a haircut U.S. Army style – right to the wood. I also saw my first camel spider so far on this trip – and I watched a pair of soldiers dispatch it using a tin of Axe body spray and a lighter. Do not try that at home. Generally not my most productive morning.

Later on though, I spotted someone being loaded onto the medic vehicle nearby my hooch. Apparently one of the engineers had shot himself in the hand – with a nail gun, on a ricochet off a knot in some wood. I did not get the patient’s name before the doors closed and the truck pulled away. But I did get the name of the PFC Terry E.Cade the medic on the back step. This sketch was just before the vehicle rushed away.

But in the late afternoon I finally did something useful and sat down with U.S. Sergeant Sophia Key. She is with the psychological operations (Psyop) unit, her home base is Garner, North Carolina. Sergeant Key has a master’s degree in psychology. Before she came to Afghanistan, she was working with kids with development disabilities in a state institution.

Richard Johnson / National PostSgt. Sophia Key of the Psyops Unit

Sgt. Key is the only woman in this U.S. Psyop detachment. She was brought in specifically to work with the female population. Here in Zabul Province, Sergeant Key works directly with Afghan women in the field, talking with them, gaining their trust, with the hope that she can then gain intelligence on the Taliban.

“At first we just try to build a relationship, we don’t immediately ask ‘What about these Taliban?’ We try and ask them about their lives. We ask how they feel about their government, and how they feel about the Afghan National Army.”

Sergeant Key dresses as a soldier but wears a scarf when out in the villages. For Afghan women, the female soldiers and interpreters on patrol are themselves subjects of curiosity.

“The first meeting I ever did the women actually approached us. I was very nervous but it really wasn’t that bad. They were slaughtering a goat, but they stopped what they were doing. I tried to ignore it. They were very considerate … they made sure I was comfortable, they offered tea, and food. … And they seemed very appreciative and I didn’t really expect that. I had a list of questions that I had written out and I think I fumbled a few.”

The Afghan women have questions of their own.

“They usually ask if I am married or have a husband. I tell them that I am still going to school. They say that they don’t need to go to school. They are just going to get married. They were not interested in education. They know their future.”

The areas of Zabul Province in which Sergeant Key operates are extremely rural. No cellphones, no phones, no television, no internet — only radios. And the benefits of the psyops program in these areas are difficult to judge.

“The thing about changing behavior and perceptions is that it is very small steps. And any little change that you can get, or any way you make things a little better … a lot of those small changes can turn into something big. I think.”

This week, President Barack Obama talked about the increasing number of “insider attacks” in which Afghan forces assault coalition troops.

“We are deeply concerned about this, from top to bottom,” said the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, echoing comments from generals in the field.

At the bottom — certainly on the front lines — are the likes of Lieutenant Abdul Wali, an officer with the underfunded, under-staffed and underappreciated Afghan National Police (ANP).

Lt. Wali operates from a police sub-station in Qalat City, a dusty, dirty, sprawling town of 32,000 people that hugs the fringes of a ruined fort, although to the untrained eye it looks like a large sand dune. Legend says it dates back to Alexander the Great.

The city, a maze of compounds and one-storey buildings that are common across southern Afghanistan, is the area of operations for 600 ANP and a hotbed of Taliban support.

“The people of Qalat are not much in support of the government. I would say only 20%-30% of people support the government,” said Lt. Wali.

It is also home to Forward Operating Base Lagman, where Lt. Wali and other officers are being trained by a U.S. Security Forces Assistance Team (SFAT).

The police, all wearing grey-blue uniforms that appear slightly too large, love to come to the base for ice-cream in the mess hall.

Since the spring, the U.S., as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), has stepped up efforts to replace its major fighting units with teams of specialists. They have the task of making the ANP and the Afghan Army self-sustaining, before the U.S. planned withdrawal date in 2014.

Local police forces will be key in holding the country together and continuing the fight against the Taliban. Lt. Wali isn’t sure they will be ready.

“The size of the ANP is not enough, even now,” he said.

Increasingly, Afghan security forces are being infiltrated by Taliban agents and sympathizers. The challenge is not just in recruiting new officers, but in ensuring their motives are honourable.

“As you see, we have had incidents where policemen and [Afghan special forces attack coalition forces. So we need to be more exact and more conservative in our recruiting,” said Lt. Wali.

At least 40 members of coalition forces have been killed and 69 wounded this year in 32 “green-on-blue” attacks. That compares with 28 dead and 43 wounded in 16 attacks during the same period last year.

The ANP tries to ensure new recruits are sponsored by someone trusted — a government official, a high-standing member of the community, or a man already in the force.

“Unfortunately, in the past some of our recruiting principles have been ignored,” Lt. Wali said.

But Lieutenant Steve Belcher, the SFAT team leader, said there were other problems.

“With the country the way it is, and the Taliban in this area, people are going to lie, or cheat, or people are going to be coerced into saying that this is a good person,” he said.

But it is not his overriding concern.

“There are a lot of Taliban sympathizers, supporters and facilitators. So most of the stuff [the police] focus on is terrorism,” he added.

Police recently foiled an attack before it took place, thanks in part to tipoffs from informants, and arrested the suspected plotters.

Scarce resources are also a problem.

Recently, the team managed to get Afghan officers a basic evidence kit, containing such items as fingerprinting material and a digital camera.

Now, the Americans are training Afghan police in evidence-collection techniques, aimed at helping them build cases against suspects.

One member of the team is Joseph Perkins, a law enforcement professional., who arrived just this week. The former officer with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms is leading the team’s evidence-based operations.

“It was hard to get a perspective until I got here. It is definitely: crawl, walk, run,” he said.

His job is to make the system ready for the changes SFAT is trying to implement. This includes making sure judges and court officials know how to view evidence presented using the new techniques, which can be as simple as fingerprinting and photographing the accused and the evidence.

“I went to trial a few weeks ago [in Kabul] and it was all run very well,” Mr. Perkins said.

“The guy was an alleged Taliban member. Most of the evidence was from ISAF statements. His story was different, and I don’t think anyone found it believable, but because there was nothing but ‘he said, she said’ evidence, he walked.

“I didn’t buy it, but the evidence wasn’t there, so I guess the system worked properly. He had already been held for a year and a half.”

Mr. Perkins hopes the evidence-gathering kit will increase the accuracy of convictions or acquittals.

“With this being a provincial capital, they are a little more advanced. Some things are accepted and some are not. The fingerprints have really caught on,” he said.

The lesson over and the kit firmly in the hands of the ANP officers, it was time for goodbyes and thanks. Then, one of the quieter police, Lieutenant Said Mahbob, suddenly spoke up.

“After 10 years of the coalition being here, we are getting this fingerprinting equipment. If we had had this equipment five years ago then we would have many more professional people who could use this stuff,” he said.

“But maybe today you start with training one policeman, and then more people can get trained. And that will make it much harder for people to infiltrate into our forces.”

After a pause, he added, “You have made us more vigilant, you actually woke us up from being asleep. We are looking at everything now.”

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The attackers were eventually killed, Kandahar government spokesman Zalmay Ayobi told AFP. Security forces also found a vehicle laden with explosives abandoned outside the compound.

The insurgents somehow made it through the tight security at the compound with pistols tucked in their sandals, Weesa said, and the gun fight that ensued lasted for about 30 minutes before the attackers were subdued.

Kandahar province is the heartland of hardline Taliban insurgents and has been one of the hardest hit in 10 years of war in which NATO troops are supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai.

Condemning the attack, Weesa said the Taliban were resorting to “new ways and tactics to hurt the government and the people” but reiterated that “they will not succeed”.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until they were toppled in a 2001 US-led invasion for refusing to hand-over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Since then, remnants of the regime have orchestrated an increasingly deadly insurgency focused on suicide attacks and roadside bombing that frequently miss their military targets and cause civilian casualties.

The attack on governor’s compound comes as the interior ministry reported the death of ten Afghan policemen after a roadside bomb ripped through their patrol vehicle in central Afghanistan on Friday.

On April 15, squads of suicide attackers took up positions in the nation’s capital Kabul, firing on embassies, government buildings and foreign military bases for 18 hours before they were all killed.

Afghan officials and US Ambassador in Kabul blamed the Pakistanis-based Haqqani Network, a close ally of the Taliban for the attacks on Kabul, considered to have been the biggest assault on the capital in 10 years of war.

Apart from Kabul, the eastern capitals of Paktia, Logar and Nangarhar provinces also came under attack, with a total of 51 people, including 36 militants, killed.

Agence France-Presse

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/28/two-afghan-bodyguards-and-two-suicide-attackers-killed-in-fierce-gun-battle/feed/10stdA US soldier stops Afghan women from walking towards the vicinity of the governor's compound in Kandahar on April 28, 2012. Two bodyguards and two suicide attackers were killed in a firefight inside the governor's compound in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province Saturday, an official saidGunmen hit memorial for Afghan villagers murdered by U.S. soldierhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/gunmen-hit-memorial-for-afghan-villagers-murdered-by-u-s-soldier/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/gunmen-hit-memorial-for-afghan-villagers-murdered-by-u-s-soldier/#commentsWed, 14 Mar 2012 01:08:35 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=151157

By Mamoon Durrani

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Gunmen on Tuesday attacked an Afghan memorial service for 16 villagers killed by a U.S. soldier, shooting dead a member of the Afghan military and wounding a policeman in a hail of gunfire.

It was the first deadly violence believed linked to the aftermath of Sunday’s killings that the Taliban had vowed to avenge and U.S. officials had warned could lead to a surge in anti-American violence in the war-torn country.

Two of President Hamid Karzai’s brothers were in the delegation from Kabul, along with provincial government officials, said a local reporter at the scene in the Panjwaii district of southern Kandahar province.

“There was an armed attack on them from a distance and the firing continued for about 10 minutes,” he said. “Bullets were coming like rain on us,” said another witness.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the Taliban had vowed revenge after a U.S. soldier walked off his base in the early hours of Sunday, broke into three houses and killed 16 people — mainly women and children.

In the capital, Mr. Karzai met families from Kapisa, a province just north of Kabul, and again condemned Sunday’s killings as “an oppression” and a “great pain for the people of Afghanistan.”

The murders were the latest in a series of actions by troops that have provoked outrage in Afghanistan, and comes weeks after the burning of Korans sparked riots that killed 40 people.

In eastern Afghanistan, about 400 university students chanting “Death to America — Death to Obama” took to the streets of Jalalabad, in the first protest against the U.S. army sergeant’s killing spree.

The crowd set fire to an effigy of U.S. President Barack Obama and blocked the main highway to Kabul before dispersing after about two hours.

Mr. Obama has warned the U.S. public against a hasty drawdown from Afghanistan, after a weekend poll said most Americans believe the war is not worth the cost and want an early withdrawal.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama said he met the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, and Afghan mission commander General John Allen on Monday to discuss his strategy for a responsible withdrawal.

“There’s no question that we face a difficult challenge in Afghanistan, but I’m confident that we can continue the work of meeting our objectives, protecting our country and responsibly bringing this war to a close,” Mr. Obama said.

He promised that the culprit would face the “full force” of U.S. law — wherever the investigation led.

But U.S. Senator John McCain warned the U.S. mission in Afghanistan was “in jeopardy,” with Mr. Obama’s withdrawal announcements and debate over rapid troop drawdowns emboldening Taliban fighters.

Briefing reporters en route to a visit to Kyrgyzstan, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the death penalty could apply. “My understanding is in these instances that could be a consideration,” he said.

Agence France-Presse

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/gunmen-hit-memorial-for-afghan-villagers-murdered-by-u-s-soldier/feed/13stdAn Afghan police officer stands guard Tuesday as men offer prayers during a ceremony at a mosque where an Afghan delegation meets with locals in Alokozai village, Panjwaii district, Kandahar province. Suspected insurgents opened fire on Tuesday on senior Afghan investigators of the massacre of 16 civilians by a lone U.S. soldier, Afghan officials said, just hours after the Taliban threatened to behead American troops to avenge the killings.Matthew Fisher: Sunday’s massacre of Afghan civilians was gift to the Taliban, a blow to coalition troopshttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/matthew-fisher-sundays-massacre-of-afghan-civilians-was-gift-to-the-taliban-a-blow-to-coalition-troops/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/matthew-fisher-sundays-massacre-of-afghan-civilians-was-gift-to-the-taliban-a-blow-to-coalition-troops/#commentsTue, 13 Mar 2012 11:06:54 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=70932

As perhaps the only independent witness to every phase of Canada’s military engagement in Afghanistan from 2002 to this year, I have always been among the evolving mission’s strongest backers. But only a couple of weeks after visiting Canada’s trainers in Kabul and Herat, I am in a quandary.

What a lone American sergeant did early Sunday morning — patiently going door-to-door in a parched stretch of rural Kandahar, which was for more than five years a Canadian responsibility, to murder 16 sleeping Afghan civilians, including nine kids — is beyond comprehension.

What the consequences will be for coalition troops — including slightly more than 900 Canadian advisers, who work closely every day with thousands of Afghan soldiers and police — is unknown. But consequences can surely be expected.

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As a second rotation of Canadian trainers, built around a Royal Canadian Regiment battalion from New Brunswick, arrives this week in Afghanistan to begin an eight-month tour, the Harper government and senior military commanders must urgently review the increased risks those Canadians may now face, and weigh them carefully against what Canada’s trainers might still be able to achieve in Afghanistan before their advisory mission ends in March 2014.

In light of recent events, Ottawa should actively consider speeding up the withdrawal of the last Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan.

Relations between coalition forces and Afghans were already seriously strained after a couple of U.S. troops defied every pre-deployment cultural briefing when they torched several Holy Korans at an airbase near Kabul. This sacrilege — for that is how every Afghan viewed it — followed the appearance of a video in which a gaggle of U.S. Marines appeared to urinate on the corpses of three insurgents. Also not forgotten was the cold-blooded murder in Kandahar in 2010 of three Afghan civilians by American troops from the same base as the sergeant implicated in Sunday’s massacre.

Such vile gifts to the Taliban — who had been routed in Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand in 2010 and 2011 thanks to the bravery, intelligence and perseverance of Canadian, American, British, Danish and Afghan troops — are undoubtedly having a cumulative effect on the always-fragile Afghan psyche.

Another less-discussed complication is that with the U.S., France and Germany now on an accelerated timetable to quit Afghanistan, those Afghans who support the coalition’s presence — and despite what many commentators have said, it has long been a solid majority of the population — are feeling desperate. Twinning what Afghans regard as rising foreign disrespect for them and their ways and the looming withdrawal of western forces, the situation for those Canadians still on the ground is unquestionably more unpredictable and volatile today.

It will be mostly bluster, but the Taliban has vowed to avenge Sunday’s killings. A greater danger is that Afghan civilians may take matters into their own hands because, as Afghan parliament has already declared, they have “run out of patience” with the foreign troops in their midst.

The blood and treasure that Canada has lost in Afghanistan are matters of brutal arithmetic. There have been 158 Canadian military deaths. The mission, which was supported by both the Conservatives and the Liberals, has cost taxpayers well more than $10-billion.

What cannot be quantified is how quickly the slow, incremental gains that Canadian combat troops achieved in Kandahar, during rotations that began early in 2006 and ended last summer, are being squandered by the inhumanity and selfishness of a few renegade Americans.

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“The good work of our men and women in uniform, as well as the work of many fearless Canadian civilians, continues to bridge what Afghanistan is and what Afghanistan can be,” MacKay said. “That work will not be deterred by a random and cowardly act of violence.”

There are about 920 Canadian military advisers still in Afghanistan since the Canadian combat mission ended last summer.

Sixteen Afghan civilians, including nine children, were shot dead in what witnesses described as a nighttime massacre on Sunday near a U.S. base in southern Afghanistan, and one U.S. soldier was in custody.

While U.S. officials rushed to draw a line between the rogue shooting and the ongoing efforts of a U.S. force of around 90,000, the incident is sure to further inflame Afghan anger triggered when U.S. soldiers burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base.

U.S. officials said an American staff sergeant from a unit based in Washington state was in custody after the attack on villagers in three houses. Multiple civilians were also wounded, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition said.

There were conflicting reports of how many shooters were involved, with U.S. officials asserting that a lone soldier was responsible, in contrast to witnesses’ accounts that several U.S. soldiers were present.

The incident was one of the worst of its kind since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said anti-U.S. reprisals were possible following the killings, just as the Koran burning incident a few weeks earlier had touched off widespread anti-Western protests in which at least 30 people died.

Neighbors and relatives of the dead said they had seen a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district at about 2 a.m., enter homes and open fire.

An Afghan man who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.

Obama said he was deeply saddened. “This incident is tragic and shocking and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan,” Obama said in a statement.

REUTERS/Ahmad NadeemAfghan National Army soldiers keep watch as Afghans gather outside a U.S. base in Panjwaii district Kandahar province Sunday. Coalition forces killed 16 civilians in a shooting spree in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Sunday, the defence ministry said, in an incident likely to deepen the growing divide between Washington and Kabul.

“INTENTIONAL MURDERS”

Afghan President Karzai condemned the rampage as “intentional murders” and demanded an explanation from the United States. His office said the dead included nine children and three women.

Afghan officials also gave varying accounts of the number of shooters involved. Karzai’s office released a statement quoting a villager as saying “American soldiers woke my family up and shot them in the face.”

Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid said a U.S. soldier had burst into three homes near his base in the middle of the night, killing a total of 16 people including 11 people in the first house.

REUTERS/ Ahmad NadeemU.S. soldiers keep watch at the entrance of a U.S. base in Panjwaii district Kandahar province Sunday. The U.S. embassy in Kabul warned on Sunday that anti-American reprisals are possible after Western forces went on a rampage in southern Kandahar province.

The ISAF spokesman said the U.S. soldier “walked back to the base and turned himself into U.S. forces this morning,” adding there had been no military operations taking place in the area when the incident occurred.

Panjwayi district is about 35 km west of the provincial capital Kandahar city. The district is considered the spiritual home of the Taliban and has been a hive of insurgent activity in recent years.

“I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren,” said a weeping Haji Samad, who said he had left his home a day earlier.

REUTERS/ Ahmad NadeemAn elderly Afghan man sits next to the covered bodies of people who were killed by coalition forces Sunday.

A senior U.S. defense official in Washington rejected witness accounts that several apparently drunk soldiers were involved. “Based on the preliminary information we have this account is flatly wrong,” the official said. “We believe one U.S. service member acted alone, not a group of U.S. soldiers.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Karzai to offer his condolences. “I condemn such violence and am shocked and saddened that a U.S. service member is alleged to be involved, clearly acting outside his chain of command,” Panetta said in a statement. “A full investigation is already under way. A suspect is in custody and I gave President Karzai my assurances that we will bring those responsible to justice.”

The Afghan Taliban said it would take revenge for the deaths, in an emailed statement to media.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said an investigation was under way and that “the individual or individuals responsible for this act will be identified and brought to justice.”

ISAF Commander General John Allen promised a rapid investigation.

Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between Karzai’s Western-backed government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan. NATO is preparing to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans and all foreign combat troops are scheduled to leave by end-2014.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance remained firmly committed to its mission and said anyone responsible would be held accountable.

The Koran burning and the violence that followed, including a spate of deadly attacks against U.S. soldiers, underscored the challenges that the West faces as it prepares to withdraw.

Sunday’s attack may harden a growing consensus in Washington that, despite a troop surge, a war bill exceeding $500 billion over 10-1/2 years and almost 2,000 U.S. lives lost, prospects are dimming for what the United States can accomplish in Afghanistan.

“These killings only serve to reinforce the mindset that the whole war is broken and that there’s little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave,” said Joshua Foust, a security expert with the American Security Project.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/11/kandahar-shooting/feed/13stdInvestigator examine the site of a shooting incident in Kandahar province Sunday. Sixteen were killed in the shooting, including nine children and three women.CLICK TO ENLARGEFO0311_CivilianDeathsAfghan National Army soldiers keep watch as Afghans gather outside a U.S. base in Panjwaii district Kandahar province Sunday. Coalition forces killed 16 civilians in a shooting spree in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Sunday, the defence ministry said, in an incident likely to deepen the growing divide between Washington and Kabul.U.S. soldiers keep watch at the entrance of a U.S. base in Panjwaii district Kandahar province Sunday. The U.S. embassy in Kabul warned on Sunday that anti-American reprisals are possible after Western forces went on a rampage in southern Kandahar province.An elderly Afghan man sits next to the covered bodies of people who were killed by coalition forces Sunday.Over 2,000 Canadians were wounded in Afghan mission: reporthttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/01/over-2000-canadians-were-wounded-in-afghan-mission/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/01/over-2000-canadians-were-wounded-in-afghan-mission/#commentsThu, 02 Feb 2012 01:09:47 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=136388

By Lee Berthiaume

OTTAWA • Defence department figures released Wednesday put the final, official tally on the number of Canadian soldiers wounded during the 10-year Afghanistan combat mission at more than 2,000.

Twenty soldiers were wounded in action in 2011, the fewest since Canada took over responsibility of Kandahar in 2005. A further 168 received “non-battle injuries.”

That brings the total number of Canadian soldiers wounded in action during the mission (April 2002 to December 2011) at 635; another 1,412 suffered non-battle injuries.

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Four Canadian soldiers were killed in 2011, bringing the total to 158.

History will show 2009 was the bloodiest year. Canadian soldiers suffered roadside and suicide bomb attacks while patrolling Kandahar, came under rocket and mortar attack in their encampments, and engaged in sporadic firefights with an elusive foe.

In that year alone, 454 Canadians were wounded and 32 were killed.

The Defence department classifies injuries and deaths in action as those suffered as a direct result of combat, including explosives, mines, rocket attacks and direct fire, as well as friendly fire incidents.

Non-battle injuries include traffic accidents, the accidental discharge of a weapon and other accidental injuries unrelated to combat.

The Defence figures do not include the thousands of Canadian soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress and other psychological damage.

A recent Defence department study predicted up to 13.2% of the 40,000 Canadians who served in Afghanistan could be suffering such injuries. Veterans Affairs Canada said 6,732 Afghan vets were receiving disability benefits as of Oct. 1, 2011.

While the end of the winding-down of the combat mission in Kandahar over the past two years saw the number of soldiers killed and wounded decline significantly, the presence of 950 Canadian military trainers in Kabul and two other sites in central Afghanistan until 2014 means the threat of injury and death has not disappeared.

Canadian soldiers helped fend off an insurgent attack on a NATO compound in Kabul in September, while Master Corporal Byron Greff was killed when a suicide bomber slammed a car into a NATO bus in October.

Postmedia News

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/01/over-2000-canadians-were-wounded-in-afghan-mission/feed/1stdSome 635 Canadian soldiers were wounded in action while in Afghanistan, with another 1,412 suffering non-battle injuries. Overall, 158 soldiers died in the conflict.Brian Hutchinson: Canada’s deafening silence on an Afghan friendhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/19/brian-hutchinson-canadas-deafening-silence-on-an-afghan-friend/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/19/brian-hutchinson-canadas-deafening-silence-on-an-afghan-friend/#commentsThu, 19 Jan 2012 18:00:22 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=64431

Richard Johnson / National PostHaji Fazluddin Agha in 2011

Haji Fazluddin Agha, governor of Panjwaii district in Kandahar, was assassinated last week. You remember Panjwaii. Canadian soldiers lived, fought and died there for five years until their combat mission ended in July. Agha was blown up by a suicide bomber. It was no random attack; they seldom are there.

Agha’s death is truly unfortunate but not surprising. Appointed governor in the key district in late 2010, he was considered one of the good ones, a competent, trusted ally of NATO forces in Afghanistan, and loyal to his national government. Naturally, the Taliban loathed him. So they killed him. Our guy. Make no mistake; he was that.

Aside from an expression of condolence from the Harper government, and a report Monday from Postmedia correspondent Matthew Fisher, no one else from Canada seemed to notice. Maybe it’s presumed we no longer care, now that our troops have left that hellhole. And maybe that’s true. If it is, we should all be ashamed.

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Matthew Fisher/Postmedia News[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWR1h-5EzUo&w=620%5D
Seconds after The Walkmen tore through <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn6kgnshjvo&quot; target="_blank"><em>Angela Surf City</em></a>, one of the very best songs in their catalogue, one fan standing directly behind me yelled something that the New York City veterans must hear on a nightly basis.
“Bring back <em>The Rat</em>.”
Forget that the band chose to play the 2004 tune as the second song in its massive 30-song set on Friday night. This dude wanted <em>The Rat</em> and it is easy to understand why. This must be one of the problems of writing a song that perfectly meshes romantic failures with the emptiness of city life.
It is just that it seemed particularly inappropriate on this evening. This was one of the five shows The Walkmen were playing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their first album, 2002’s <em>Everyone Who Pretended To Love Me Is Gone</em>. Playing a pair of sets over 140 minutes, The Walkmen were celebrating their entire career, not just the song for which they are best known. To clamour for <em>The Rat</em>? Well, the fan had a lot of nerve to be asking for that particular favour.
It is funny to think of The Walkmen a decade into their existence. They came in as the New York City indie scene exploded, releasing their debut a year after The Strokes released <em>Is This It?</em> and the same year as Interpol released <em>Turn On The Bright Lights</em>. But after seeming to peter out after 2004’s boozy stupor through the city, <em>Bows + Arrows</em>, The Walkmen came back in 2008 and 2010 with two fantastic (and fantastically reviewed) albums: <em>You & Me</em> and <em>Lisbon</em>. The albums revealed a band not dependent on the non-stop detonations of <em>The Rat</em>. The band showed a softer, more nuanced side, even putting brass instruments to good use. (Horns made multiple appearances on Friday evening.)
Meanwhile, The Strokes can barely get together in the same room to record an album these days, while Interpol has devolved with each album. While the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are probably the best-known band from the city’s scene more than a decade after the boom, The Walkmen — who now are spread out across the United States, from New York to Philadelphia to New Orleans — are certainly deserving to be listed among the city’s elite musicians.
Why? Well, of course, there is no blueprint for a band’s success. It depends on the people involved. Lead singer Hamilton Leithauser announced to the crowd that the band had just wrapped up their sixth album — seventh if you include their 2006 remake of Harry Nilsson’s <em>Pussy Cats</em> — so obviously the band is still working cohesively.
From a live perspective, there is little doubt why they work so well. They now have the catalogue to support two hours worth of playing. Maybe the material from <em>Bows + Arrows</em> still resonates deepest with fans — they kicked off the show with four successive tracks from the album — but it is clear that everyone in the crowd has their own favourite tune, or at least their own second-favourite tune.
As well, The Walkmen are the rare band that has two visual focal points. Most bands live off of the charisma of their lead singer, and Leithauser — and man, what a perfect name for the debonair front man — is certainly a good one. His rich-man’s-Dylan vocals boomed through clearly in a live setting. As he howled out the first-set closer, the rousing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXQ-BNiR9vU&quot; target="_blank"><em>In The New Year</em></a>, it was hard to think that there could be a voice that meshes class and urgency in rock as well as his.
But if you tire of him, you can always divert your attention to Matt Barrick, who appears to love drumming more than you love anything. His work is equal parts ferocious and hypnotic, turning the crescendo in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NkBFwGvh2I&quot; target="_blank"><em>On The Water</em></a> into a giant moment of catharsis.
Indeed, if fans keep asking for <em>The Rat</em>, it is as much for Barrick’s barrage as anything else.
<strong>Verdict:</strong> Ten years in, The Walkmen are an engaging act, both insistent and understated. They are deserving of their longevity.
<strong>Setlist</strong> (cobbled together from my notes and setlist.fm; some songs might be out of order)
<strong>First Set</strong>
<em>What’s In It For Me</em>
<em>The Rat</em>
<em>No Christmas While I’m Talking</em>
<em>Little House Of Savages</em>
<em>The Blizzard Of ‘96</em>
<em>We’ve Been Had</em>
<em>Red Moon</em> (Leithauser solo, with horns)
<em>Louisiana</em> (with horns)
<em>Love Is Luck</em> (new song)
New song
<em>Heartbreaker</em> (new song)
<em>Angela Surf City</em>
<em>Woe Is Me</em>
<em>Stranded</em> (with horns)
<em>Canadian Girl</em> (with horns)
<em>On The Water</em>
<em>In The New Year</em>
<strong>Second Set</strong>
New Song (Leithauser solo)
<em>138th Street</em> (Leithauser solo)
<em>Blue As Your Blood</em>
<em>All Hands And The Cook</em>
<em>Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone</em>
<em>Wake Up</em>
<em>Hang On, Siobhan</em>
<em>Thinking Of A Dream I Had</em> (request)
That’s The Punchline (request)
<em>Four Provinces</em> (request)
<em>Rue The Day</em>
<em>Another One Goes By</em> (request)
New song

Agha accepted the dangerous job in Panjwaii because he was asked. He was needed. His predecessor, Haji Baran, was a hothead, a suspected Taliban sympathizer, allegedly corrupt to the gills. Canadian officers and diplomats pretended to make nice with the man, embracing him in public and showering him with compliments and smiles, but behind the scenes, they were scathing.

The Canadians desperately wanted Baran removed from office in 2010. The Afghans — including Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa, who is a Canadian citizen — resisted, which drove our most senior officers there nuts. In a briefing I witnessed in the summer of 2010, one very senior Canadian told another that he feared some sort of anti-NATO conspiracy had to be in play, keeping Baran in office.

Finally, Baran was removed and Agha was installed. Here‘s what I had to say on the man after our first encounter in April:

The man is a born politician, garrulous and shrewd, but demanding as well. One new school that opened in Panjwaii district last week might be empty–owing to fear of Taliban retribution–had Agha not ordered parents to enrol their sons. That school, in Salavat, is now teeming. Attendance went from 23 on Day One to about 150 at last count. More schools have opened around Salavat, putting the Taliban on their heels. They can’t retaliate against everyone.

Now he’s dead. And Haji Baran is said to be alive and well. That says a lot about the situation in Kandahar. That says almost everything, really.

One of Canada’s best Afghan friends was assassinated in Kandahar last Thursday.

Haji Fazluddin Agha, the governor of Panjwaii District, was killed when his car was struck by a vehicle driven by a suicide bomber on a road funded and paved with Canadian help and protection. Two of Agha’s sons, two policemen and a civilian, also died in the blast.

A charismatic bear of a man with a booming voice and a lush black beard, Agha was a deeply pious Muslim. He detested Islamist zealots and was a fierce opponent of the Taliban and al-Qaida. The former mujahedeen had come home to Panjwaii early last year at the behest of President Hamid Karzai who valued his political acumen and his ability to convince some hardcore Taliban fighters to lay down their arms.

Agha “was considered an ally of Canada and will be remembered for his tireless work to bring peace and prosperity to his district and the entire country,” Foreign Minister John Baird said in a statement after the governor’s death.

The last time I saw Agha it was under a glorious crescent moon about seven months ago. The governor had invited Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner and Tim Martin, Canada’s top diplomat in southern Afghanistan, to a sumptuous, farewell banquet in the garden of his family compound in the farming village of Zalukhan.

Local elders and a few influential officials from Kandahar City feasted on lamb, goat and chicken served on a bed of rice. Also at the dinner were members of Milner’s leadership team, fresh troops from a U.S. army battalion from Alaska — the Arctic Wolves — who were to take over Canada’s battle space in a few days and a dozen U.S. navy Seals, Special Forces Marines and commandos from Canada’s secretive JTF 2 who had emerged from the desert after a clandestine mission.

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Before everyone sat facing each other across a square on futon-like cushions to eat, Agha held court in a receiving room, entertaining senior Canadians and Americans. As they sipped tea, he showed his guests the photograph of a third son mounted on the wall behind his desk, and explained: “He was shot by the Taliban as we talked on the telephone.”

Matthew Fisher/Postmedia NewsHaji Fazluddin Agha, governor of Panjwaii, saluted Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner and his soldiers as "our greatest friends" and thanked them for having brought peace to his district at a farewell feast.

Later, addressing the larger gathering in the garden, the governor said: “The Canadians are our greatest friends, so to have them here makes it a great day.”

More than almost any other Afghan in the South, Agha had a reputation for getting things done. That is why Milner, the seventh and last Canadian commander in Kandahar and now deputy commander of a U.S. army corps in Texas, was keen to work with him.

“We knew we had a leader in Haji Fazluddin Agha,” Milner said.

Agha was largely responsible for the opening of a school last spring that had been refurbished with the help of Canadian troops in the nearby town of Salavat.

Only 23 kids showed up for that first day of school, an event that had been delayed by four months by terrified parents because of threats of violence by the Taliban. They changed their minds after Agha had roared that if they didn’t produce their children, he would “bring the army and the police to your homes and drag your kids to school.”

Salavat may have been the most dangerous town in Canada’s area of operations. As result of Agha’s hectoring, the school soon had a full complement of 250 students and nine other refurbished schools funded by the Canadians opened not long thereafter.

A few weeks later, at the Panjwaii District Centre, Agha gave another bravura speech to about 100 elders, Milner and U.S. army General David Petraeus, then NATO’s Afghan commander and now director of the CIA.

“You can tell Mullah Omar (the Taliban leader), if there is anyone here who wants to fight us, bring it on,” the former mujahedeen fighter thundered. “Before 95 per cent of the people here were friends of the Taliban — now 95 per cent of them support the government. Those insurgents who want to create problems for the people of Panjwaii cannot come back.”

Though the Taliban are a shadow of what they once were in Panjwaii, a few have remained or returned and are still able to occasionally carry out spectacular targeted killings. Agha was about 50 years old. He is believed to be survived by several wives and daughters.

Postmedia News

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/16/matthew-fisher-canada-loses-a-key-friend-in-afghanistan/feed/8stdPanjwwaii District Governor Haji Fazluddin Agha, March/April 2011Haji Fazluddin Agha, governor of Panjwaii, saluted Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner and his soldiers as "our greatest friends" and thanked them for having brought peace to his district at a farewell feast this summer.